Assembling the Perfect Professional Paint Brush Set

Whether you're tackling a simple touch-up job, a room makeover, or you’re redecorating an entire house, you want a really professional finish. At Dulux Decorator Centre, we offer a range of professional paint brushes and paint brush sets to help you with the task in hand.  

What you need to know about paint brushes

The starting point is understanding what the relationship between the kind of paint being used, the job and the materials used in the paint brush.

Paint brushes can be made from natural bristles, typically hog hair or synthetic fibres derived from nylon and polyester. Bristle brushes tend to be favoured for use with oil-based paints but absorb water and swell up when used in water-based paints. This can lead to a subpar finish and less effective transfer of paint from the brush to the wall. This makes purely Bristle brushes less suitable for interior wall painting.

Synthetic filaments for brushes were developed to work better with water-based paints and with advances in waterborne paint and synthetic filaments in the last decade, there is a paint finish and synthetic brush for almost every job.

A significant advantage synthetic filament has over natural bristle is that they are more durable, basic polyester filaments are twice as durable compared to bristle whereas nylon filaments like Chinex® from Dupont (used in the Purdy Monarch Elite) are 7x more hardwearing. This represents a potential money saving over time as a well-cared for synthetic brush will last longer than one made from natural bristle.

Synthetic filaments can be designed to have specific thickness or taper ratios at different points over the filament length which allows them to be tailored to use in wall paints or thinner varnishes. Natural bristles cannot provide this kind of precision in brush design.

Occasionally, brushes are made with a blend of natural and synthetic filaments, this is typically done in brushes that are designed with being able to hold a high volume of paint without sagging and provide a reasonable quality of finish. Being designed for use in all paints the quality of finish from an “all purpose” brush will never be quite as good as the finish achieved from using a bristle brush in oil or synthetic brush in water.

So, when it comes to looking at what brush to use for a particular job, if you were painting exterior masonry you want a high-capacity brush with long, firm filament/bristle mix that can hold a lot of paint and work it into the surface.

By comparison if you were painting interior trim like skirting boards or windowsills with a waterborne satin or gloss, a synthetic brush with fine tipped yet stiff filaments like the Purdy Sprig is ideal.

For interior walls, almost any 1-4” synthetic brush is ideally suited to the application of interior finishes but there are subtle differences between brands, some people favour stiffer brushes as these are good for ‘bossing’ the paint around and provide a good amount of physical feedback from the wall. Others prefer softer brushes which can be less fatiguing to use over the course of a whole day of painting and allow for more precise laying off.

Which paint brush do you need for the job in hand?

There are paint brushes that help you with specific painting techniques. An angled paint brush, is designed to make getting a precise paint edge against adjacent surfaces like walls, ceilings, skirting and door frames super easy. Likewise, fitch brushes which resemble artists brushes and can come in round or flat shapes are used for intricate work where regular brushes are simply too large to reach e.g. fine recesses of spindles.

If you’re painting the ceiling, or you’re doing the walls but don’t have a ladder, then a long-handled paint brush is essential. It allows you to get up into the corners of the room without having to find something to elevate you. If it’s a wallpapering project rather than a painting job, it’s worth investing in a wallpapering brush, too. That way you guarantee you get a nice smooth finish to the paper – no bubbling.

Build your perfect paint brush set at Dulux Decorator Centre

Whatever surface you’re working on, whether you’re painting, cutting in, or touching up, we’ve got the paint brushes you need. If it’s a big job, create your own paint

brush set that’ll last you for years. Check out our complete range of professional paint brushes online here. Or visit your local Dulux Decorator Centre store.